The Atlanta-based rapper named Future is influencing the music you hear in the present. He's appeared on songs with Pharrell, Drake, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus. Future spoke with the hosts of NPR's Music's Microphone Check, Frannie Kelley and Ali Shaheed Muhammad.

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD, BYLINE: Yeah. I think it's more like rap singing, singing rapping. Reminds me of some of the blues, like being on a chain gang, kind of chanting, soldier marching, and you're singing but you're rapping, talking, relating emotionally.

KELLEY: Emotionally wrenching.

MUHAMMAD: Wrenching.

KELLEY: Melodramatic.

MUHAMMAD: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)

MUHAMMAD: He sets the tone, establishing the mood, really, of the song's spirit.

KELLEY: When we talked to him, he told us that he doesn't write songs so that they fit in with everything else on the radio or in the club. He wants his music to change the temperature of the room.

FUTURE: You want to be able to say, man, when I play this in the club, I want the whole club to change. When everybody's just talking to each other, when they hear this, I want everything to just get quiet.

KELLEY: So he shows up on these songs with big pop stars. He'll be on a song with Rihana, a love song, but there'll be sort of a dark undercurrent.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE SONG")

MUHAMMAD: A lot of people see Future as, like, this super fast, pop chart-climbing artist, but what you may not really understand is that he comes from a very rootsy, spiritual, intellectual organization from Atlanta: the Dungeon Family. Outkast, Cee-Lo from Goodie Mob, the whole Goodie Mob crew.

KELLEY: So he came up under these guys who had great pop success being total weirdos. Like not worrying about the in-crowd at all. And so there's this song on his new album that doesn't sound like any of the rest of his songs and it features Andre 3000 from Outkast. It's called "Benz Friendz."

And although they are talking about cars and women, it's not in the way that you would expect them to.

FUTURE: I don't want a materialistic friend. I want something that's real. I don't want a friend who's just here for the fame or for the money or the cars that I'm driving.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BENZ FRIENDZ")

MUHAMMAD: Well, he definitely is shifting the mood with that song.

(LAUGHTER)

MUHAMMAD: No doubt about it.

KELLEY: It's a complicated mood.

MUHAMMAD: They sound like they're have a lot of fun though.

KELLEY: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BENZ FRIENDZ")

INSKEEP: Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley of NPR Music's Microphone Check. You can hear more of their conversation and more from Future at NPRmusic.org.

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